Monday, February 20, 2012

An op-ed in New York Times makes the case that the Stolen Valor Act — making it a crime to lie about military service even when no harm is done to others — is bad law.

William Turner brings up one of the points I was thinking about this morning while reading a news account of the coming U.S. Supreme Court arguments on a challenge to the law.

The Stolen Valor Act is also dangerously broad: it puts satire and parody at risk of criminal prosecution. The comedian Stephen Colbert could not safely perform a skit in which his blowhard patriot persona claimed to have a medal. The act doesn’t require proof that anyone believed or was deceived by the false claim.

If the Supreme Court were to accept the government’s argument, other disconcerting legislation could easily follow. Congress could enact a law that criminalized false claims by political candidates about their qualifications for office, or false claims about their opponents. Surely the government has an “important” interest in preventing voter deception. But as much as we want to encourage factual accuracy in our politicians, do we really want the government to prosecute, for example, Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who falsely stated on his Senate Web site that his parents moved from Cuba after — rather than before — Fidel Castro took power? Who among us has not said things about ourselves that are untrue? Who has not exaggerated or embellished details to tell a better story?

Tempting as it is to consider criminal penalties for lying politicians (or hyperbolic bloggers), it's not sound First Amendment law.

Arkansas Department of Corrections spokesman Solomon Graves issued a press release this morning with details of a small prison riot that apparently occurred last night at the Varner Unit in Grady. /more/

A former inmate who claims she was sexually assaulted over 70 times by former McPherson Womens' Unit chaplain Kenneth Dewitt has filed a federal lawsuit against Dewitt, several staff members at the prison, and officials with the Arkansas Department of Corrections, including former director Ray Hobbs. /more/

Sen. John McCain said in a radio interview today that Republicans in the Senate would block any U.S. Supreme Court nomination put forward by Hillary Clinton as president. /more/

Lawyers helping represent the named plaintiffs in the civil rights lawsuit failed against Sherwood over the way they fleece hot check defendants appeared in court this morning to ask a substitute judge to recuse himself, with an attorney for plaintiffs claiming Hamilton made comments praising Sherwood District Court Judge Milas "Butch" Hale III and said he hoped the civil suit would fail. /more/

The U.S. Supreme Court is back at work one justice short because of the unprecedented roadblock Republican senators have thrown up to considering President Obama's nomination of the thoroughly uncontroversial Merrick Garland to fill the late Antonin Scalia chair. /more/

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge doesn't have time to look into some important consumer issues in Arkansas, but she is busy intervening in lawsuits around the country on pet Republican issues such as discrimination against gay people. /more/

I always scan the Little Rock City Board for items of interest this week and this one caught my eye: A zoning measure required by a proposal to tear down the IHOP at Markham and University.

Not that it will do much good, but Times columnist Ernest Dumas this week provides some useful Founding Father history, plus a little bit of Bible, for how wrong-headed Mike Huckabee, Asa Hutchinson, the Republican legislature and others are in using government to enforce their religious views.

by Max Brantley

May 26, 2015

Most Shared

Next week a series of meetings on the use of technology to tackle global problems will be held in Little Rock by Club de Madrid — a coalition of more than 100 former democratic former presidents and prime ministers from around the world — and the P80 Group, a coalition of large public pension and sovereign wealth funds founded by Prince Charles to combat climate change. The conference will discuss deploying existing technologies to increase access to food, water, energy, clean environment, and medical care.

Plus, recipes from the Times staff.

Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) was on "Capitol View" on KARK, Channel 4, this morning, and among other things that will likely inspire you to yell at your computer screen, he said he expects someone in the legislature to file a bill to do ... something about changing the name of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.

So fed up was young Edgar Welch of Salisbury, N.C., that Hillary Clinton was getting away with running a child-sex ring that he grabbed a couple of guns last Sunday, drove 360 miles to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., where Clinton was supposed to be holding the kids as sex slaves, and fired his AR-15 into the floor to clear the joint of pizza cravers and conduct his own investigation of the pedophilia syndicate of the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state.

There is almost nothing real about "reality TV." All but the dullest viewers understand that the dramatic twists and turns on shows like "The Bachelor" or "Celebrity Apprentice" are scripted in advance. More or less like professional wrestling, Donald Trump's previous claim to fame.

Dustin McDaniel gives the thumbs up to a man set to dismantle EPA regulations.

The Arkansas Supreme Court today upheld state statutes that mandate a court order to list parent names on a birth certificate other than the biological mother and father. The Court threw out the ruling of Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Tim Fox, who found last year that the state Health Department had violated the Constitution by refusing to list both parent names of children of same-sex couples (the children of the three couples who were plaintiffs in the case were conceived via sperm donation).